Apparently a big gun rights rally has been scheduled in Virginia next week and this has prompted Virginia’s governor to declare a state of emergency and a gun ban at the capitol. All because he fears another Charlottesville will happen.
Gov. Ralph Northam, D-Va., declared a state of emergency Wednesday and said he is temporarily banning individuals from carrying firearms and other weapons on Capitol grounds ahead of a scheduled gun rally for fear of a repeat of the violence law enforcement was ill-prepared to deal with at another rally in Charlottesville more than two years ago.
Northam said at a press conference Wednesday that the decision is based on “credible intelligence” from “mainstream channels, both offline and online, such as alternative dark web channels used by violent groups and white nationalists from outside Virginia,” which law enforcement says have “malicious plans” that include storming the state Capitol building and stirring up violence at Monday’s rally.
“This includes out of state militia groups and hate groups planning to travel from across the country to disrupt our democratic process with acts of violence,” Northam said. “They’re not coming to peacefully protest. They’re coming to intimidate and cause harm.”
This is stupid.
If you want to avoid another Charlottesville from happening, you ban anti-fascist terrorist groups from coming anywhere near the rally. You also make sure that police don’t work with anti-fascist groups to push rally goers into the anti-fascists. By doing that, you’ll avoid all the things that happened at Charlottesville in 2017.
It seems like the governor is just doing this to piss off and agitate the gun rights people who are planning on attending the rally.
Apparently a big deal is being made out of this rally, but with the orange man in office, I don’t see an imminent threat of mass gun control laws or mass gun confiscation taking place. It’s not even practical for the government to round up the over 300 million guns that are privately owned across the country.
